Friendship

Or how to overrule the GM

Let’s talk about the most important thing in your pony’s life in Tails of Thedastria—Friendship!

Like Stamina, Friendship is not a die value. Instead, your pony character has a small number of very precious and powerful Tokens of Friendship that you can decide to use at any point during your adventures in Thedastria.

Starting Tokens of Friendship

A pony character starts of level 1 starts with 1 Token of Friendship per person in the group, counting all players and the gamemaster.

So, if it’s just you and the gamemaster in the group, you start with 2 Tokens, but if it’s you, two other friends, and the gamemaster, then everypony starts with 4 Tokens of Friendship.

Using Tokens of Friendship

Tokens of Friendship are amazingly powerful, but they are difficult to earn, so use them wisely. At any point during an adventure, you can decide to give the GM one or more Tokens of Friendship and change something that just happened to get a different outcome.

Changing a die roll

The most common example of something that you might want to change by spending a Token of Friendship is a die roll. Maybe you, or a friend, have just rolled a die for your pony in a Challenge Test and have failed to roll high enough for a success—that just won’t do!

You have three ways to change the die using Tokens of Friendship as shown in the table below.

Spending 1 Token of Friendship	Spending 2 Tokens of Friendship	Spending 3 Tokens of Friendship
By spending 1 Token of Friendship, you can ignore the result and roll the die again.	By spending 2 Tokens of Friendship, you can ignore the result and attempt the test again, but by rolling a D20 instead of the die that you were rolling earlier.	By spending 3 Tokens of Friendship, you pass the test or win the challenge automatically—no need to re-roll is needed!

It’s important to keep in mind that this is just an example and the gamemaster can always decide how many Tokens of Friendship are needed to change a die roll, depending on the importance of the Test or Challenge and the results of a success or failure. The gamemaster can decide that it is easier to change some results, and harder to change others—it’s always up to the gamemaster, and their word is law.

Changing the Story

Tokens of Friendship are not just used to change die rolls. You can also use them to ask the gamemaster to slightly change what happens in the story! For example, you are at the market and you really need to buy a coil of rope, but you don’t have enough money to be able to afford it. You already tried to beg with the seller to let you have the rope at a cheaper price, you failed your Charm Test. Well, you could ask the gamemaster whether you could give back a Token of Friendship and then find the money you need on the ground...what a stroke of luck!

Or maybe your character has forgetten the rope at home, and you need the rope urgently to climb into a well. You could ask the gamemaster whether you could give back a Token of Friendship to say that you actually remembered the rope at the last minute, and you have it in your saddlebag. The gamemaster could say at this point that one Token of Friendship is not enough, but that you can “have remembered” the rope if all of your friends also spend a Token of Friendship.

Basically, Tokens of Friendship allow you to make any change, as long as the gamemaster agrees, and you and your friends have the amount of Tokens of Friendship the gamemaster says you need.

Mixing Tokens of Friendship

There’s one more thing that you should remember—whenever you are using Tokens of Friendship, you can mix them with Tokens from your friends, and the more you do this, the more powerful they become!

So, even if you only have one Token of Friendship left, you can use more Tokens to change a single die roll or event if your friends agree to give back some of their Tokens as well and throw them in with yours.

As this is the ultimate power of friendship—sharing, caring, and joining forces to overcome trouble—Tokens used together this way are worth more. The gamemaster should keep this in mind when deciding the amount of Tokens that you need to give back a certain result.

To continue our die roll example, the gamemaster might decide that if both you and a friend use a Token of Friendship on a roll, those Tokens count in total as three Tokens instead of just two.

Earning Tokens of Friendship

So, how do you earn Tokens of Friendship? Well, the easiest way to do so is by leveling up. Whenever you level up, everypony gains a number of Tokens of Friendship equal to the number of friends they are leveling up with.

For example, there are two pony characters in a group—they both level up at the same time, so both gain 1 Token of Friendship.

Another way of earning Tokens of Friendship is for your pony to behave as a very, very good friend to their friends, particularly when they are in need, because as you know:

A true, true friend helps a friend in need,
A friend will be there to help you see,
A true, true friend helps a friend in need,
To see the light that shines from a true, true friend.

The gamemaster should always reward acts of great friendship with free Tokens of Friendship for the pony character acting in such a friendly way.

For example, you and your friends are the Grand Galloping Gala in Val Renoir when you notice that a big bowl of orange juice is about to tip, and will spill all the juice onto the new dress of your pony friend. You rush in and put yourself in the way of the juicem ruining your own clothes, but saving hers, because you know how much she cares about that dress! That is a great show of friendship, where you sacrifice something for your friends in the most generous way—so the gamemaster awards you a free Token of Friendship!

In other words, when you play Tails of Thedastria, always try to be as helpful and to your friends as you can possibly be—remember, if you smile, the world will smile back (why not try this in real life, too?).

Another great thing about Tokens of Friendship is that there is no maximum amount of Tokens—you can have as many as you can earn!

New Friends!

Whenever a new friend joins the group, one Token of Friendship is immediately added to each player’s pool—the more, the mare-ier! When a friend leaves the group or cannot make it to a game session, the group members do not lose a Token of Friendship, since that person is still a friend in spirit, even if they cannot be there in pony!